This tutorial will guide you how to make a low cost homemade wasp trap.

As you will see, it is quite simple to make a yellow jacket trap at home. The advantages of this are that the wasp trap can be made with very little effort, the materials you need are usually on hand in every household and best of all – it practically won’t cost you a thing.

Wasp Trap Materials

Here the materials we will be using:

1. Plastic soda bottle – regular 2 liter size is fine
2. Cutter
3. Piece of string
4. Adhesive tape or a stapler
5. Jam
6. Water
7. Soap Detergent

That’s it! We are pretty sure you have all of that stuff right at home!

Instructions

Take off the bottle cap and clean the bottle.

If you are looking at the bottle from the bottle cap towards the bottom of the bottle – cut the plastic bottle at the point where the bottle first reaches its widest point. (Be careful!)

Now you have created two parts from the soda bottle:

1. The neck part of the bottle (looks a like a funnel)
2. The wide part of the bottle (looks like a cylinder)

Apply some jam to the outer side of the tip of the neck part of the bottle

It is possible to use other kinds of wasp bait but preferably use something with sugar in it like sugar water for the wasp trap, maple syrup, juice, etc.

Make a hole on each side of the wide part of the bottle. Insert the string from each side of the bottle and secure it so it won’t come out.

Pour some water with some soap detergent inside the wide part of the bottle (a few inches of water is enough)

Insert the neck part of the bottle (inverted) into the wide part of the bottle. Make sure they are aligned at the top and then secure the two parts together at a few points with some adhesive tape or with a few staples.

Hang the wasp trap on the string you have inserted. Preferably near the hive or the source of the wasps and out of reach from children.

How the Wasp Trap Works

How the Wasp Trap Works

This is how wasp traps work.

The wasps will enter the bottle through the wasp trap bottle neck trying to reach to the jam.

Once inside the trap – the wasps will not be able to get out and will not be able to fly out through the funnel of the wasp trap. They will try to fly around but eventually the wasps will get exhausted from all that flying around and will then drown in the water.

Maintenance

The only thing you need to do is from time to time remove the dead wasps from the wasp trap. If you don’t – the dead wasps will form a layer one on top of the other that will prevent the new wasps from drowning. It will also make it possible for the wasps to fly out of the wasp trap. From time to time also replenish the bait from the Wasp Trap.